Walking out of the Galleria Mall near St. Louis, Missouri, I had the uncanny feeling that I had just left the Galleria Mall in Cambridge, MA. The more I survey American towns, I increasingly see the exact same stores filling towns 50 or 100 or 1,000 miles away. Chain stores and corporations are overrunning America’s streets, pushing locally owned, independent stores out of business. But what does this trend towards homogeneity mean for our country? What are the implications for our energy use and the sustainability of our lives? And what can we do, if anything, to stop it?

On a trip to various cities in the Midwest and Northeast this winter, I took note of the number of times we passed, not silos and farm fields, but townships and shopping centers where Home Depot is the local hardware store, Banana Republic the local boutique and Olive Garden the local family restaurant. The same ten corporations had replaced local stores. All the communities looked, felt, smelled, tasted and sounded like every other. It seems that, eventually, the entire US will be filled with one identical town after the next. The convenience, cheaper products and deft marketing of corporations are winning over individuality, allowing Wal-Marts to obliterate our Main Streets. As a result, our city centers are teetering on the edge of losing their uniqueness.

Taming this trend is not just about nostalgia for mom and pop stores. Buying locally grown food from locally run stores is important for the economy of a township. It keeps money and resources within the community, lowers transportation costs and decreases energy use. Corporate takeover is a threat to sustainable living.

It is true that now many corporations are touting their sustainability, but until very recently, big corporations like Wal-Mart and McDonalds did not integrate sustainable stewardship into their company missions. Even today, with greenness evermore esteemed, these companies have not shown an invested interest in making themselves environmentally sound. While these companies may be moving toward greenness and sustainability in their US operations, there has been no shift in how these companies operate overseas, where they work at the continued expense of human capacity and natural resources of developing countries. In India, Coca-Cola has been accused of draining groundwater supplies vital to local populations, and Wal Mart’s attempts to open stores there have led to riots.

While the corporate expansion sounds bleak, some organizations are working to fix the problem, notably in Chicago, which has proven to be an exception to the corporatizing rule. During the course of my trip, Chicago had, more than any other city, a noticeable pride in its neighborhoods. Chicago’s most hip areas are filled with locally-owned stores that sell local products. That independent stores have survived there while failing in other cities is no coincidence. It is due, in large part, to the presence of an organization called Local First Chicago.

Local First Chicago was founded in 2005. Its mission is to work with local shops to “educate the public on the importance of choosing locally owned, independent businesses.” LFC has made it their mission to spread the word that local shopping is better for neighborhoods. The printed mission statement of LFC is on the windows and doors of nearly every store in these areas, outlining the ways that local shopping benefits a community.

Local shopping is good because it keeps the interesting areas of town interesting through diversity, but there is more to buying locally than hipster-cred. LFC lists the top ten reasons to buy locally. Buying locally keeps money in the neighborhood, ensures better service and puts tax dollars to good use. A report, known as the Andersonville Study, was conducted through LFC to test the economic impact of buying locally in lieu of patronizing chain stores. The study found that 70% of money spent at a local store goes back to the community, versus 40% from a chain store.

Effective resistance to corporate take-over of our cities does not mean, as Alisa Smith urges in her book The 100-Mile Diet, refusal of all chain manufactured goods, but we cannot stand by as Starbucks runs Oren’s Daily Roast out of town. A middle ground must be found where the integrity of a community is upheld. This is where LFC particularly shines: in making local shopping an active choice. By pasting the mission and logo of Local First in storefront windows, the organization is publically making known the importance of shopping locally. In so doing, they are taking a stance against the corporations that otherwise would buy them out.

Being an environmentalist who refuses plastic bags at every store I go to, recycles compulsively, and unplugs my coffee maker, the draw of a neighborhood is more than just that local stores keep it unique. It is that buying locally is a necessity for the sustainability of our local economies because it guarantees that money and resources stay in the hands of the people who are directly involved in their community, and, by reducing energy costs and transportation needs, it aids in the struggle for environmental sustainability.

Sophie Lubin is a graduating senior at Columbia University where she is majoring in English Literature and working toward a concentration in Sustainable Development. She is a contributor to the Natural Resource Defense Council blog Greenlight, and has been published on the World Policy Institute blog.